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PREPARATIONS FOR 
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WALTER L. FISHER 



Preprinted from 
The University Record, Vol. II (New Series), No. i, January, 1916 



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The University Record 



Volume II JANUARY I916 Number i 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE^ 

WALTER L. FISHER, LL.D. 
Former Secretary of the Interior 

Half-truths are dangerous because the element of truth which they 
contain carries conviction and easily leads to its application far beyond 
the real significance to which it is entitled. We are at present in grave 
danger of just such a misconception of one of the most prevalent state- 
ments with regard to military preparation. The sentiment of this 
country is undoubtedly opposed to militarism. Our ideals and purposes 
are peaceful. No imperiahstic propaganda could hope to succeed if its 
character and purposes were understood. The agitation for increasing 
our military forces is as a whole genuinely peaceful in its purpose. 
Certainly it makes its great appeal upon the ground that preparation for 
war is essential for the preservation of peace. The proverbs of the 
ancients and the utterances of our early Presidents are the mottoes it 
repeats: Si vis pacem para bellum, "If you wish peace prepare for war." 

And undoubtedly in a world where selfishness and greed and lust of 
power still move the mass and the rulers of men to the extent they do, 
today, where force is still believed to constitute a necessary if not a' 
proper means of advancing national interests and national ideals, 
mihtary preparation against war is an essential for securing peace. 
But there is real danger that we shall be misled — or may deceive ourselves 
— into believing that preparation for war is the most important thing for 
us if we desire to secure our own peace and to promote the peace of the 

' Delivered (in part) as an address on the occasion of the Ninety-seventh 
Convocation of the University of Chicago held in Leon Mandel Assembly Hall, 
December 21, 1915. 



2 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

world. Nothing, it seems to me, could be more unfortunate than such a 
result. If we wish peace, the most important thing is not to prepare 
for war — although that we should do. If we wish peace, the most 
important — the all-important — thing is to prepare for peace; to do the 
things that make for peace and that promote peace, not the things 
that make for war and promote war. And yet these peaceful measures 
are the things that are receiving scant attention. 

I am led to present to you some thoughts upon this subject because 
the significance of the great war in which the larger part of the civilized 
world is now engaged is the one absorbing interest of our whole intel- 
lectual Ufe. I have no thought that I shall say things that have not been 
better said by others — that I have anything original to impart. I 
am moved by a deep conviction that mankind is struggHng with destiny 
as it has seldom struggled before, and that it is the duty of every man 
and woman — and especially of every educated man and woman — to 
think of this world-war, its causes, and its probable results; and, as his 
thoughts become at all definite, to express them, if it be only in confirma- 
tion of, or dissent from, the views expressed by others which are Ukely 
to affect pubhc opinion and pubUc action. It is a time for each human 
being, in humiUty and sincerity, to ask himself: "What do I think? 
What is the explanation of this appalMng catastrophe and what is to 
follow it ? What should and what can I, in my tiny circle of possible 
action, do to help, if ever so little, toward a right solution of the problems 
it presents?" 

What might be called its purely academic interest is greater than 
any other interest of the student. It pervades the Ubrary and the 
laboratory, the classroom and the lecture-hall, and the quiet cloisters of 
the university. WTiat a compelling stimulus to intellectual activity it 
is; what a zest it adds to all our studies in physical, political, social, 
and economic science; to what fierce tests it is subjecting our theories of 
human progress and social evolution! 
; . ' There is nothing, indeed, so instructive, so absorbing, so essential for 
us — as individuals and as a nation — to understand as the mighty con- 
flict that is now going on ; its causes and its consequences, its horrors and 
its folly. It is important for all of us to appreciate the reality of its 
horror. But I am not qualified to picture this horror if I would, and this 
is not the place or the occasion. It is fitting, however, for us to consider 
its folly, and how we in the future may escape such folly. "Wisdom 
is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting 
get understanding." 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 3 

There is a call for the public service of educated men and women 
such as has not been heard in the world since the French Revolution. 
For we must go back to France and the Napoleonic era for any such 
epochal events as are happening in the world today. It is quite possi- 
ble, perhaps it is exceedingly probable, that the actual consequences 
upon our whole intellectual, social, political, and economic outlook that 
will follow and result from this war will be greater than those that fol- 
lowed even that great upheaval of civilized society. It is only as we 
understand how fundamental are the issues that are forced upon us 
that we shall meet those issues intelligently and wisely. Our danger, 
and the danger of Europe, is that we shall see its causes and effects 
superficially and shall devise superficial remedies and adopt a super- 
ficial settlement. There are so many essentially superficial phases of 
the situation that are nevertheless so important and so compelUng in 
their interest that we can all be forgiven for misconceiving their relative 
importance compared with the deeper issues; but it is only as we find 
and face these deeper issues of transcendent consequence that we shall 
work good out of this awful evil that has fallen on mankind. 

Already the danger of one great folly from a superficial view of 
this war has become apparent, and that is that we shall think of it as 
due to, and as an exhibition of, ruthless military power; that it is due to 
what is called Prussianism, and that if we could just curb and destroy 
Prussianism the world could go on quite satisfactorily, upon the whole, 
and without any serious or fundamental disturbance of the established 
social, political, economic, and intellectual order. No mistake could 
be made so disastrous to the future peace and progress of mankind as this. 
Even if the Prussian war-god sits the saddle in Germany today waging 
war with a ruthlessness that appalls mankind and an efficiency that 
compels its admiration, nevertheless how pitiful would be the conclusion 
that what appalls us is not war, but merely the ruthlessness and effi- 
ciency with which it is made. 

It was an American thinking of war in America who said that "War 
is hell!" — not German war or English war or Russian war, but war, 
wherever waged or by whatever nation. There was never a great war 
waged that did not produce all the atrocities of this war, on one side or 
on both. The scale of the atrocities may be greater, as the scale of this 
war is greater. Even the doctrine of frightfulness is a doctrine that has 
been defended and practiced by every nation, even our own, within 
such limits and under such conditions as each nation has determined for 
itself at the time and according to its exigency as it saw it. There are 



4 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

few follies equal to the folly of imagining that war can be made 
humane. 

Our own "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United 
States in the Field" (General Orders No. loo, 1863), issued under 
Abraham Lincoln, the most humane of Presidents, and again issued 
without modification during the war with Spain in 1898, announced: 

To save the country is paramount to all other considerations. 
AND 

18. When the commander of a besieged place expels the noncombatants, in order 
to lessen the number of those who consume his stock of provisions, it is lawful, though 
an extreme measure, to drive them back, so as to hasten on the surrender. 

19. Commanders, whenever admissible, should inform the enemy of their intention 
to bombard a place, so that the noncombatants, and especially the women and children, 
may be removed before the bombardment commences. But it is no infraction of the 
common law of war to omit thus to inform the enemy. Surprise may be a necessity. 

No matter how clear the evidence may seem to some of us today, 
we are too near the event to be sure of our perspective. We must not 
forget how often "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Even if 
we make certain that Servia was the occasion, not the cause, of this 
war; that Germany had prepared for "the day" and that she chose the 
day which she thought was most favorable to her; that she, and no 
other, precipitated this horrible cataclysm of cruelty and destruction — 
even if we spare whatever nation is responsible no part of the just con- 
demnation of mankind for touching the match to the powder that had 
been so assiduously laid throughout Europe, and that needed only the 
match — how blind, how pitifully and perversely blind, we should be not 
to recognize that the fundamental error consisted in having a state of 
international relations that was prepared for the match; that the 
fundamental responsibility, deeper than Prussianism, was with the 
nations that built and maintained their civilizations over a powder 
magazine! Without now discussing whether any other basis of inter- 
nationalism is practicable than the basis of national armament and of 
military force, how foolish, how unfair, to say that, in a society of 
nations based on force, that nation which acquires and uses the greatest 
and the most efficient force is exclusively to blame for an explosion that 
leads to a test of force! The matured and distant judgment of man- 
kind will be little concerned with awarding praise or blame on the basis 
of the relative extent or efficiency of military preparation, or even of the 
relative ruthlessness with which military force was used in a state of 
society based on force and on the use of force to secure or to retain the 
right to exploit other lands and peoples. 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 5 

The truth is that the really great differences between the warring 
nations are only differences of degree — degrees of militarism, degrees of 
democracy, degrees of political and economic intelligence. I do not 
minimize these differences. So gigantic is the scale on which the world- 
movement proceeds that these differences of degree become of huge 
dimensions and importance when the diverging lines are projected into 
the expanded field of action. In war, international differences are 
centrifugal. Chasms widen as the circumference of the conflict expands 
and the conflict becomes more intense. War distorts and exaggerates 
and intensifies every difference of national feeling, every national mis- 
understanding. If, however, it be true that Germany is more mili- 
taristic than England or France or Russia or Italy, it is true only as a 
statement of the degree in which each of these nations has been and is 
militaristic. If it be true that Germany believes that she has a national 
ideal and peculiar national interests — political, economic, intellectual — 
which can be advanced by military force, the same thing is true of each 
of her rivals. If it be true that militarism in Germany is a menace to the 
world, it is also true that militarism in the rest of Europe is a menace to 
the world. Does Germany believe that she has a peculiar mission to 
perform in the unfolding of civilization, that her form of political organ- 
ization, her economic and intellectual processes, offer the greatest assur- 
ance of human progress, and that it is her duty as well as her right to 
impose this Kultur on the world ? England has been obsessed by the 
same megalomaniac folly. So have we. If, happily, we are less sure 
that we are the people, and that wisdom is in danger lest it die with us, 
can we claim anything more than that we have seen the futility of such 
egotism, ever so little sooner and ever so little more clearly than some 
others? Are John Bull and Brother Jonathan types of modest self- 
effacement and humility before the slowly unfolding secrets of the 
universe ? 

We have been reading much of the lords and prophets of war in 
Germany; but have they uttered anything more frankly militaristic 
than Lord Roberts, "Little Bobs," the mihtary idol of Great Britain? 

How was this Empire of Britain founded ? War founded this Empire — war and 
conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the habitable globe, 
when we propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her navy or diminish her army, 
Germany naturally refuses; and pointing not without justice to the road by which 
England, sword in hand, has climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly 
or in the veiled language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany 
is determined also to ascend! Who amongst us, knowing the past of this nation, and 
the past of all nations and cities that have ever added the lustre of their name to human 



6 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

annals, can accuse Germany or regard the utterance of one of her greatest a year and 
half ago [or of General Bemhardi three months ago] with any feelings except those of 
respect ? 

Norman Angell, in his recent book on America and the New World 
State, has collected this and many other quotations which demonstrate 
that there is an "Anglo-Saxon Prussianism" which differs only from 
German Prussianism in the extent to which it has attained popular 
support or oflBicial power. And yet it was the bitter complaint of Bem- 
hardi and Trietschke that their ideas had so little influence among the 
people or in oflScial circles. The most interesting to me of all Angell's 
quotations is that from the Belgian author, Doctor Sarolea, who, in 
his book on The Anglo-German Problem, says: 

What is even more serious and ominous, so far as the prospects of peace are con- 
cerned, the German who knows that he is right from his own point of view, knows that 
he is also right from the English point of view; he knows that the premises on which 
he is reasoning are still accepted by a large section of the English people. Millions 
of English people are actuated in their poUcy by those very imperialistic principles 
on which the Germans take their stand. After all, German statesmen are only apply- 
ing the political lessons which England has taught them, which Mr. Rudyard Kipling 
has sung, and Mr. Chamberlain has proclaimed in speeches innumerable. Both the 
English Imperialist and the German Imperialist believe that the greatness of a country 
does not depend mainly on the virtues of the people, or on the resources of the home 
country, but largely on the capacity of the home country to acquire and to retain large 
tracts of territory all over the world. Both the English ImperiaUst and the German 
Imperialist have learned the doctrine of Admiral Mahan, that the greatness and pros- 
perity of a country depend mainly on sea-power. Both believe that efficiency and 
success in war is one of the main conditions of national prosperity. 

Now as long as the two nations do not rise to a saner polirical ideal, as long as 
both English and German people are agreed in accepting the current poUtical phi- 
losophy, as long as both nations shall consider mihtary power not merely as a neces- 
sary and temporary evil to submit to, but as a permanent and noble ideal to strive 
after, the German argument remains unanswerable. War is indeed predestined, 
and no diplomatists sitting round a great table in the WiUielmstrasse or the Ballplatz 
or the Quai d'Orsay will be able to ward off the inevitable. It is only, therefore, in 
so far as both nations will move away from the old political philosophy that an 

understanding between Germany and England will become possible It is the 

ideas and the ideals that must be fundamentally changed: "Instauratio facienda ab 
imis fundamentis." And those ideals once changed, all motives for a war between 
England and Germany would vanish as by magic. But alas! ideas and ideals do not 
change by magic or prestige — they can only change by the slow operation of intel- 
lectual conversion. Argvunents alone can do it. 

Let us turn from the war lords of England and Germany to those 
who do not speak under the influence of military training or military 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 7 

occupation. We are told by the translator of Dr. Paul Rohrbach's book, 
The German Idea in the World, that it — 

probably inspired more Germans than any other book published since 1871, for every- 
body felt that it presented a generally true picture of the fatherland and indicated the 
paths which the Germans had resolved to follow. 

This opinion I have had substantially confirmed by most competent 
authority. I think it gives us a real insight into the ideas that have 
moved the German people. You will note that the author does not 
hesitate to praise the Anglo-Saxon or to criticize the German, and that 
his underlying and dominating purpose is peaceful expansion. 

The markets of the world! We need them today for our existence as positively 
as we need our own land, and the day is approaching with irrevocable certainty when 
we shall need them even more. We can be nationally healthy only so long as our 
share in the business of the world continues to grow, and only if this is the case shall 
we be able to foster the inner values which spring from our national idea, and let them 
take part with the other factors in the shaping of the culture of the world 

The German idea, therefore, can only live and increase, if its material foundations, 
viz., the number of Germans, the prosperity of Germany, and the number and size of 
our world-interests continue to increase. As these foundations continue to grow they 
compel the Anglo-Saxons to make their decision between the following two 
propositions: 

Will they reconcile themselves to seeing our interests in the world maintain 
themselves by the side of their own, and come to an agreement with us concerning 
them ? Or will they fight, with force of arms, to remain the sole mistress of the world ? 
If they choose the latter, it will depend on our strength whether we conquer or sur- 
render, or hold our own 

We have progressed, within a generation, with a rapidity which creates the belief 
that we can wipe out within a decade the losses of a century. But we grow dizzy, 
when we contemplate our political economy, shooting up to steep heights and resting 
only on the small support of European Germany, especially when we compare it with 
the much wider security across oceans and continents which England and America 
have built. It is here where the abyss is lurking into which our new grandeur may be 
hurled unless we secure it with stronger props than are made of iron or gold. We have 
now reached the point which illustrates a fact which no one can view too seriously, 
namely, that the world-power of the Anglo-Saxons does not rest solely on external 
supports, such as wealth, colonies, dominion over the seas and flourishing industries, 
but that corresponding to these material possessions a growth of character and of inner 
worth and an increase in the breadth of the Anglo-Saxon idea have actually justified 
the people possessing them in reaching out for the dominion of the world 

The true attitude of England toward our navy and commerce is revealed by such 
comments as were contained in the famous article in the Saturday Review of September, 
1897, which made a great stir in England and the whole world, and frankly stated that 
England's prosperity could only be saved if Germany were destroyed. "England," 
the article says in part, "with her long history of successful aggression, with her 
marvelous conviction that in pursuing her own interests she is spreading light among 



8 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

nations dwelling in darkness, and Germany, bone of the same bone, blood of the same 
blood, with a lesser will-force, but perhaps with a keener inteUigence, compete in 
every corner of the globe. In the Transvaal, at the Cape, in Central Africa, in India 
and the East, the islands of the Southern Sea, and in the far Northwest, wherever — 
and where has it not? — the flag has followed the Bible, and trade has followed the 
flag, there the German bagman is struggling with the English pedlar. Is there a 
mine to exploit, a railway to build, a native to convert from breadfruit to tinned meat, 
from temperance to trade gin, the German and the Englishman are struggling to be 
first. A million petty disputes build up the greatest cause of war the world has ever 
seen. If Germany were extinguished tomorrow, the day after tomorrow there is not 
an Englishman in the world who would not be richer. Nations have fought for years 
over a city or a right of succession. Must they not fight for two hundred fifty million 
pounds of commerce ? " 

Doctor Rohrbach says: 

We know very well that it does not reflect the feelings of the whole of England, but 
nevertheless of a considerable portion of the English nation 

The two political catchwords "Reaction" and "Government by feudal classes" 
which foreign public opinion frequently uses to describe German conditions, are not 
calculated to bring success to the German idea in the world. But they are not the 
only obstacles. Like other people we suffer from the defects of our virtues. The 
reverse and unfortunate complement of that sense of duty and industry which we 
call the positive poles of our character, are an offensive superiority and awkwardness 

of behavior which are constantly putting us at a disadvantage Between these 

two observations there is so much German awkwardness, indolence and ignorance of 
the national idea in its highest sense, that we can explain the progress abroad which 
we have made, only by the one thing in which we excel all other people: our exact and 
conscientious labor and our remarkable diligence. 

The real evil lies in the doctrine of political and economic imperialism 
common to so many nations — the doctrine that holds that the economic 
welfare and progress of every nation and of its people depend upon 
securing constantly expanding markets and sources of supply, constantly 
expanding opportunities for trade; and that such opportunities are only 
to be found, or at least are best to be found, by acquiring political 
dominion over, or spheres of influence in, other countries, especially in 
countries relatively backward in industrial development, but capable 
of such development. If this is sound doctrine economically, if it really 
is enlightened selfishness, if it is not to be restrained by the sense of moral 
obligation to respect the rights of other nations, if, indeed, the whole 
theory is to be gilded and disguised by a supposed moral obligation to 
uplift the relatively backward peoples and develop the relatively unde- 
veloped lands— the theory of the white man's burden — it would seem an 
irresistible conclusion that force must continue to rule the world, and 
that peaceful civilization can go forward only under a dominant nation, 
or under a balance of power between several dominant nations. 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 9 

I do not believe that this doctrine will indefinitely continue to con- 
trol policies and international relations. It is not morally sound. It 
is not economically sound. It is not even enlightened selfishness. It 
must and will disappear with the demonstration of its futility. This 
doctrine and civilization, as the masses of mankind are coming to con- 
ceive of civilization, are irreconcilably opposed. Force as a means of 
promoting economic interests or of advancing intellectual ideals is certain 
to diminish and to disappear, just as certainly as human slavery and 
the imposition of theological or religious dogma by force have already 
disappeared. The rapidity of the process will depend chiefly, if not 
entirely, upon the progress of education and intelligence among the mass 
of mankind. If, therefore, we desire to reduce the chance of war, either 
because it is right for the world that it shall be reduced, or because we 
are thinking only of ourselves and wish to escape its horrors, if our 
desire is to prepare for peace, the surest way to accomplish this result is, 
first, by seeing that our own national purposes and methods are not 
based upon the desire for economic expansion by means of political 
dominion or special privilege, or any sort of sphere of influence that dis- 
criminates in favor of our people as against those of any other nation; 
and secondly, by doing everything in our power to bring other nations 
to this same conclusion, including active co-operation with other nations 
to produce this result. 

Our peace depends upon ourselves and upon the peace of the world; 
and one of the greatest steps toward the establishment of the world-peace 
upon which our peace so largely depends is a sympathetic and effective 
co-operation between the Anglo-Saxon and the German and Scandinavian 
nations, to which Earl Grey has referred as "nearest to us in mind and 
sentiment." 

We are told that at the end of the war our potential enemies will 
certainly be exhausted and unable or disinclined to take up a quarrel 
with us. I wish I could have the assurance upon this score that some of 
my fellow-pacifists entertain; but I cannot forecast either our own 
wisdom or the degree of human emotion and human folly that will 
survive — that possibly may be born of — the greatest exhibition of 
human emotion and human folly that the world has ever seen. Our 
first duty, our most enlightened selfishness, is to do everything in our 
power now and at the close of hostilities to remove the causes of war, 
to create alternatives for war; but as we cannot hope to remove every 
cause for war, as we cannot be sure that effective alternatives for war 
will be devised or will be accepted, we have ourselves no sane alternative 



lO THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

but to be prepared for effective defense. We have seen too clearly the 
realities of war to risk its coming or its consequences. Our defense 
must be real or it will only add to our danger. Within the limits of 
what is strictly necessary for defense our preparation must be made as 
though it were certain to be needed. No fear that other nations will 
be led by our example to increase their armament unnecessarily can 
stand for one moment against the possibility of our need. What is 
incumbent upon us is to make it as clear as possible that the character 
and the extent of our military preparation are strictly defensive; indeed, 
our first inquiry should be into the possibilities of a military policy that 
will be on its face and in its essential characteristics defensive. 

With the greatest deference, and subject to correction by demonstra- 
tion and not by assertion, I venture to suggest that there is such a thing 
as a defensive military policy, which is essentially different in important 
particulars from an aggressive military policy, and that the plans for 
military and naval preparedness which are being presented to us either 
by the President and his political advisers, or by the General Board of the 
Navy, or the General Staff of the Army, do not recognize or apply the 
distinction. 

I am not discussing these things as an expert, nor do I assume that 
my audience is composed of experts. I am, however, not without the 
support of expert opinion, although it has not been allowed much public 
expression. And I assume that the great audience of our ordinary 
fellow-citizens, as inexpert but as intensely and vitally concerned as we 
are, will in the end settle our military policy on sea and land, for this is 
necessarily the way of democracy. Admiral Mahan says: 

Justly appreciated, military afifairs are one side of the politics of a nation and 
therefore concern the individual who has an interest in the government of the state. 
They form part of a closely related whole, and putting aside the purely professional 
details .... military preparations should be determined chiefly by those broad 
political considerations which affect the relations of states one to another or of several 
parts of the same state to the common defense. 

Robert Wilden Neeser, whose book, Our Navy and the Next War, is an 
argument for greater naval strength, nevertheless says : 

In the last analysis it is the people who govern, it is the people who must be 
informed of their military condition. The regulations which forbid miUtary and 
naval men writing for publication for the purpose of discussion should be rewritten. 
The freest discussion on all military and naval topics by oflScers of both services 
should be encouraged, such writings to be signed by the authors, for which they would 
assume the entire responsibility. When this privilege has been given, then the people 
will have a means of getting at the truth and the authority in each case will be known. 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE II 

By sealing the lips of those capable of giving the truth we have encouraged scarehead 
articles upon our naval preparedness which carry Uttle weight and make no lasting 
impression upon the minds of the people. 

Major-General Francis Vinton Greene has also called attention to the 
fact that Germany permits pubUcation of frank discussions of military 
subjects — several thousand mihtary books in a year as against several 
scores at the most in English-speaking countries. 

At all events, whether they like it or not the experts must convince 
us, untrained as we are. What we want and what we are entitled to 
have is candor and the fullest, freest opportunity for the expression 
of every sincere and intelligent judgment that has been or is being 
formed within our military and naval service. We are dealing with 
what is alleged to be and what we beUeve is matter of Ufe and death. On 
such a matter the order prohibiting officers in our military establishment 
from uttering and pubUshing opinions upon mihtary policy' seems 
especially unwise and leaves the country altogether too dependent upon 
the officials or official boards that for the moment control the adminis- 
tration of our mihtary and naval service. In that service are experienced 
and serious students of the problems of military and naval poUcy whose 
views upon fundamentals and upon important details disagree with the 
views of both the military and the political heads of our mihtary and 
naval establishments. These dififerences of opinion are not being given 
to the public. We are thus being led to the unwarranted conclusion 
that there is unanimity among our experts as to the kind and extent of 
military preparation we should have. 

I am a convinced advocate of securing and utilizing expert advice in 
the administration of public affairs. I have the highest regard and 
respect for the officers in our naval and military service. I attach the 
greatest importance to their opinions with respect to the things that will 
produce the most efficient military preparation for war and that will 
produce the greatest results in actual warfare. But what we are deciding 
is not the sort of an army or navy that will be most powerful in war, 
but what sort of an army or navy will be most effective for securing peace. 
And that is a question which involves issues of national policy that are 
not exclusively military — in which, indeed, the military motive is of 
secondary importance. 

'"Officers of the Army will refrain, until further orders, from giving out for 
publication any interview, statement, discussion, or article on the military situation 
in the United States or abroad, as any expression of their views on this subject at 
present is prejudicial to the best interests of the service." — War Department, General 
Order No. lo. 



12 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

We must tell the Navy Board and the General Staff — not have 
them tell us — what it is we want an army and a navy to do; what are 
the purposes for which we wish to use an army and a navy. Then and 
then only can they tell us what kind of an army and navy will be best 
adapted for our purpose. Otherwise their opinions and estimates must 
necessarily be based on the assumption that we want a miUtary establish- 
ment adequate to defend all our outstanding possessions and obligations, 
and to maintain all our supposed national policies and interests, and in the 
event of war, in the language of the recent report of the War College, 
"to insure a successful termination of the war in the shortest time." 

All this may sound somewhat captious and theoretical, of little 
practical value, but I am not without knowledge that there exists among 
military experts — and in our own military service — a recognition of the 
fact that there is a substantial difference between a defensive and an 
offensive military policy and that it is not being recognized in the plans 
which are oflScially recommended for our military preparation. We are 
being urged to support a military program which we are assured is 
intended only for defense; but it is not an exclusively defensive pro- 
gram. I do not intend to impugn in any degree the sincerity of its 
advocates — I think they believe that they are advocating a defensive 
policy; but they have not defined nor had defined for them what it is 
we wish to defend, nor have they abandoned that hoary maxim of 
military science that a strong offense is the best defense. 

We shall make a serious mistake in all that we do toward military 
preparedness against war and for peace unless we tell our military 
experts and tell them in a way that they will understand and accept 
that we want a military estabUshment planned and prepared for defense 
and not for offense, even though offense may help defense — that we 
consciously and definitely intend to abandon and to have them abandon 
whatever military advantage there may be in having an army and a 
navy prepared to take the aggressive and to seek out and attack in force 
an enemy away from our own boundaries and waters. Only in this 
way can we convince the world that our object is pacific, that we are 
not merely repeating the hollow assurances of other nations that have 
built great navies and trained great armies in the name of peace only to 
use them for aggression when the opportunity and the temptation came. 
Only in this way can we be sure that we shall not yield to temptation 
when it comes. What is there in our national history to justify the 
claim that we will not use force to extend our boundaries or our dominion 
over the lands of weaker nations, no matter how sincerely at this time 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 13 

we intend not to do so ? What right have we to thank God that we are 
not as other men, especially those Prussians? With an army and a 
navy designed for and substantially limited to the defense of our own 
lands and shores, we can with some confidence and effectiveness advo- 
cate those principles and agencies of international policy that are best 
adapted to reduce the chances of war. 

To illustrate what I have in mind, and not I alone, but others whose 
military experience and training give greater weight to their opinions, 
let me ask you whether it is not clear that a real substantial clarification 
of the Monroe Doctrine, adopting and extending the suggestions of 
President Wilson's message, would not in itself do more to make war 
against this country unUkely than all the increase we are likely to make 
in our army and our navy ? We hear much of possible war with Japan. 
Should we not do more toward the prevention of such a war by dis- 
cussing with Japan the issues surrounding Japanese immigration and 
the Open Door in China man-fashion and in a way and with results that 
would do justice to our interests and to Japanese interests and to that 
self-respect which Japan has earned her right to entertain ? If we really 
intend to give national independence to the Philippines, should we not 
remove a great menace to our peace if we could secure international 
guaranties of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Filipino 
nation ? If we should open the Panama Canal to the warships of all 
nations under international guaranties of the safety of the Canal itself 
and of our peaceful ownership and operation of it, should we not make it 
a prize less likely to excite the cupidity of other nations and less likely 
to lead to war with us ? If we did these things, should we not need an 
army and a navy quite different in character and size from those we 
should need if we do not do them? Can we intelligently determine 
what sort of an army and a navy we need without considering what it is 
we propose to defend ? If we retain all these possessions and interests 
and international policies, where can we stop in our military prepara- 
tion ? What folly to retain them if we do not propose to make serious 
and adequate preparation to defend them, and could not make really 
adequate preparation if we would. 

It may be said that these matters really make no difference in the 
sort of military preparation we ought to make — that it will require the 
same sort of an army and the same sort of a navy to defend our own 
lands and waters that we should need to defend the Philippines and 
the Panama Canal and to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. No doubt some 
military authorities would make precisely this claim; but I venture to 



14 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

assert that excellent military authority is of quite a different opinion, 
and that it is supported by many considerations that appeal and should 
appeal to that great public which under our democratic government 
must and should decide the fundamental questions of policy directly 
involved. 

We are at least entitled to ask questions. If our navy is intended 
only to defend our own shores from invasion, could we not enormously 
increase the number of our submarines for the same money that it is 
proposed to spend on dreadnaughts; and would not the result give 
us a far more effective navy for purely defensive purposes? Does 
not a single superdreadnaught cost as much as many submarines, 
depending on the types selected? If modern war — if this war — has 
taught us anything it is that a navy of the dreadnaught class is of little 
if any practical value against a stronger navy of the same sort. The 
weaker navy is inevitably bottled up. It dare not come out into the 
open unless it is prepared to risk all upon the result of its unequal con- 
test with a stronger force. Unless we are prepared to enter the endless 
competition in naval expenditure, is not the navy of the era that ended 
with this war a waste of money and a self-deception as an eflficient 
instrument of defense ? Is not this confessed by the insistence of those 
who cling to this type of navy that the United States must increase its 
navy until it equals the navy of any other nation ? Some say any other 
nation except England, either because they are appalled at competition 
in naval expenditure with England, whose existence as a world-power 
depends upon predominance at sea, or because they think we should 
assume that war will never occur between England and the United 
States. Some insist that we must have a navy equal in aggressive 
strength to the combined navies of any two other nations except Eng- 
land; and that anything less than this will leave us without adequate 
protection for the very reasons that are given as underlying the dread- 
naught naval theory. Has not this war demonstrated that a navy 
composed chiefly of great numbers of submarines, supplemented by the 
torpedo boat, the destroyer, and the aeroplane, would be of immense 
defensive value against the most powerful dreadnaught navy afloat ? Is 
not a single submarine an effective fighting unit against any fleet, while a 
single dreadnaught is of practically no value whatever ? Might not a few 
submarines encounter and destroy a mighty fleet, while a dreadnaught 
navy outclassed in strength by an invading squadron would Ue impotent 
in the harbor ? Are we not about to commit this nation to a program of 
dreadnaughts that need yet more and more dreadnaughts to make them 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 1$ 

useful ? Is it not wise to delay this program at least until we can know 
more than is now possible as to the place of the dreadnaught in the 
future navies of the world ? Secretary Daniels says that expert opinion 
on this subject has undergone great fluctuations within the past few 
months. He has himself substantially increased the number of sub- 
marines for which the Navy Department is asking over the number 
recommended by the Navy Board. Why not spend our dreadnaught 
money, at least for the present, on submarines and other defensive 
agencies? Even Neeser asks the question: "With the offensive sub- 
marine now a certainty, should we continue to build battleships?" 
And his answer is an evasion and is also based upon the premise that 
"the ultimate aim of war is to command the sea." Having already 
called the offensive submarine "a, certainty," he says: "The new 
cruising submarine, if a success, may become a serious menace to a 
battleship fleet; but it does not seem a sufficient menace to stop the 
construction of those ships which have so long and in the face of all 
challengers held command of the sea." 

But it may be said that such a navy as I am discussing could not be 
used so effectively as the dreadnaught in foreign waters away from its 
base. Precisely so; and is not this one of its chief advantages to us? 
Could we do anything that would so effectively stamp our military 
policy as intended only for defense as to create a navy that, while power- 
ful for defense would by its very character have less power for aggres- 
sion ? If we wish only to defend ourselves, do we need any other navy ? 
Can we do anything that will so completely convince the world that we 
mean what we say when we declare that we are arming only for peace ? 
Can we do anything that will so increase our power to influence other 
nations to adopt the policies and the agencies that make for peace? 
Even if we had to concede that a defensive navy would lack some of the 
aggressive power that we might desire in actual warfare, can we not 
well afford to make this sacrifice for the immense gain in making war 
less likely to occur ? 

Is it not a choice between this policy and the race for naval suprem- 
acy which alone will enable us " to command the sea" ? Norman Angell 
may be urging some propositions about which there may well be differ- 
ence of opinion, but he has at least convincingly demonstrated one 
fallacy: 

Mr. Churchill lays it down as an axiom that the way to be sure of peace is to be 
so much stronger than your enemy that he dare not attack you. One wonders if the 
Germans will take his advice. It amounts to this: Here are two likely to quarrel; 



l6 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

how shall they keep the peace ? Let each be stronger than the other, and all will be 
well. This "axiom" is, of course, a physical absurdity. On this basis there is no 
such thing as adequate defense for either. If one party to the dispute is safe, the other 
is not, and is entitled to try and make itself so. 

Is there not a distinctively defensive policy applicable to the army 
just as to the navy? The arguments for increased land forces and 
reserves seem entirely sound. But this does not relieve us — even us 
laymen — from the necessity of considering what they should be and how 
they should be obtained. I do not propose to discuss details of military 
organization. It is important, however, for the public to understand 
that there are differences of opinion and of interest in the army as to 
what branches of the service should be increased. I am expressing no 
opinion, except that there should be complete freedom in the service 
for the public discussion of the issues. 

All the military opinion about which I know anything is agreed that 
for a defensive policy we need trained oflSicers, trained infantry, trained 
artillery, adequate equipment, and both an adequate supply of munitions 
and provision for increasing and maintaining an adequate supply of the 
things for which modern war makes such insatiate demands. Does 
the program of preparedness that has been prepared for us contemplate 
these things ? We are told that our preparation must be a genuine and 
a serious thing, that at the close of this war some victorious nation or 
combination of nations may decide to use its trained and veteran troops 
against us in resentment, or envy or lust of power or hope of loot, and 
that we must be ready and remain ready, that we must keep our powder 
dry. We are told that only thorough training and the very best equip- 
ment for an army in the leash would avail for our defense. And how 
is it proposed to secure such an army ? Make a small increase in our 
regular troops and give a citizen soldiery annually a few months' 
intensive training that will not interfere too seriously with their business 
and professional occupations. Is there then no serious need for pre- 
paring against the possibility of a real invasion ? 

The truth is that at and for some time after the close of this war 
the United States may be in less danger from attack than at any time 
in its history. We all hope with differing degrees of confidence that 
out of the horrors and destruction of this war will come a real advance 
toward some form of international relations and international arrange- 
ments that will reduce the burdens of armament and the probabilities 
of war. If our hopes were really more than hopes, this nation might 
well await the outcome without increasing at this time its military 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE tj 

establishment — not that we might not then take wise precautions to 
meet the actual situation that will then be disclosed, but that we could 
be so much wiser then than we possibly can be now. It is because our 
hopes are only hopes, and not certainties, that we are urged to prepare 
now against a possibility that might be so unspeakably disastrous to 
this country, to its men, and especially to its women and its children, 
that we are not justified in delaying at least adequate preparation to 
resist attack. But if we are really to prepare against a real attack, 
what folly it is to be less than adequately prepared. We should analyze 
the situation that is at all likely to confront us and meet that situation. 
What is the situation ? 

It seems clear that we need anticipate no attack from Great Britain 
or indeed from any of her allies for some time after this war, no matter 
what its outcome, unless we ourselves furnish some new and gratuitous 
occasion for a quarrel. For a hundred years we have settled amicably 
every issue with Great Britain, and many of the issues have been pecul- 
iarly irritating and important to both nations. Our substantive rela- 
tions were never more sympathetically friendly, and new causes would 
have to arise to strain them. Our diplomatic relations were never so 
assured by treaties providing for the peaceful settlement of issues upon 
which we may disagree. Certainly this is true of Great Britain; and 
with her friendship and the already increased and growing appreciation 
of the reality and value of the Anglo-Saxon tie, a war between the two 
great Anglo-Saxon nations is practically unthinkable. I mention Great 
Britain because it seems not worth while to discuss the effect of our 
proximity to Canada in the event of war. Canada is probably a host- 
age in our reach against war with England; but let us assume that it 
would be a military asset for Great Britain. No other first-class 
power except England has any foothold in North America from which 
land forces could be drawn or in which they could be landed. Any 
other formidable enemy would be compelled to transport its invading 
army across the ocean. I have had no opportunity to examine or to 
discuss with military officers in whose judgment I have confidence the 
recent report of the War College division of the General Staflf. We are 
all, however, entitled to question its soundness or its availability, as 
the President and the Secretary of War have questioned them. They 
are civilians like ourselves. 

General Greene, however, has discussed at some length the problems 
presented to us in the event of such invasion and has advised us of the 
conclusions of such mihtary students as Freiherr von Edelsheim in the 



i8 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

service of the German General Staff. His conclusion is that our initial 
problem would be to prevent the landing, or to defeat after it landed, a 
force of 240,000 infantry with the ordinary normal complement of 
cavalry, artillery, stores, etc., and that this is the largest force that 
it would be practicable to transport to our shores as a single expedition. 
The War College now makes a larger estimate. Germany has per- 
mitted the public discussion of military problems of this sort. We 
have refused or restricted it. The weight of available military authority, 
however, seems agreed that we should have 500,000 trained soldiers to 
meet an invasion and that this number of really trained men adequately 
equipped would successfully repel the invasion. It may be that, con- 
sidering the disadvantages attending disembarkation, substantially less 
than this number would suffice for effective defense, provided they are 
trained soldiers, and not half-trained miUtia or national guardsmen. I 
speak in no terms of disrespect of our militia — quite the contrary. 
I merely insist upon the fact, recognized by the intelligent militia officers 
themselves, that men in active civil life who give all the time they can 
to military training cannot successfully oppose regular troops. The 
militia can quickly become an army, but it cannot be an army; and what 
we should need if an invasion threatened us would be an army. Then let 
us have an army — no larger than we need for the puprose of manning our 
defenses and repelling an invasion, but a real army of real soldiers ade- 
quate for this purpose and a miUtia adequate to fill the ranks as they 
need filling. I do not say 500,000 men; I say what number we need 
for the defensive purpose which we intend to accomplish. 

The suggestion of universal military service in this country can be 
intelligently determined only by considering separately each of the 
objects for which it is alleged to be desirable. Its main— its real- 
purpose is military. If it is not necessary or at least desirable for strictly 
military purposes, it will never be adopted because of its alleged physical 
or disciplinary benefits. And for what conceivable purpose of mihtary 
defense should we train to arms millions of the young men of the United 
States ? From a mihtary point of view this surely would be a senseless 
waste of time, energy, and money. If we are to have an army, let us 
have a real army, trained and efficient for its purpose. Let us have no 
superficial training of millions of schoolboys, no amateurish conscription 
of the adult manhood of the nation, creating a paper force immensely 
greater than any possible need for any purpose that we ought to enter- 
tain only to demonstrate its inefficiency if a test of strength should come, 
to disseminate through the nation a false feeling of security, and to 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 19 

encourage the natural tendency toward brag and bluster to which Brother 
Jonathan has been unfortunately susceptible. 

There is undoubtedly a strong feehng in the United States that, no 
matter what we should do in the way of military preparation, we should 
be in no danger of imperialistic ambition or that aggressive militarism 
which precisely the same pohcy has undoubtedly tended to create else- 
where. There is far greater danger from these sources than our people 
realize. This false assumption of a superior resisting power of Americans 
to the allurements of imperialism and national expansion only makes the 
danger more real. Human nature is essentially the same in Prussia and 
in the United States. 

It is not in Germany alone that the Nietzschean exaltation of the 
Will to Power stirs the atavistic savage that lingers in most of us and 
in some of us to an exceptional degree. Few Americans may beUeve 
that war is a biological necessity, but many are easily persuaded that 
it is a necessity on other grounds, and its exhibition of primitive virtues 
and barbarian vigor distracts attention from its hideous cruelties 
and its senseless waste. We need to be constantly reminded that mankind 
is not degenerating because it is finding less use for some superb quaHties 
of the animal and the savage, that evolution is out of the jungle, not 
back into it. 

If German blood or German training makes men more prone to 
exalt force in international affairs, it will be well for us to remember that 
in 1910 there were in the United States 8,282,618 people who were born 
in Germany, or one or both of whose parents were born in that country. 
This takes no account of more than 2,000,000 of our population similarly 
derived from Austria. 

If the United States is to have increased miUtary forces — and it seems 
essential that we shall — let us not be bhnd to the dangers that are insepa- 
rable from military training and military strength. Let us endure with 
patience the taunts of the militant pacifist whose motto is "Speak 
softly and carry a big stick." I try sometimes to visualize that 
peace-loving and peace-seeking community in which that motto is 
carried into practical effect, as its distinguished author illustrates 
it in his own delightful way. Picture to yourselves the citizens of 
Chicago leaving their homes in the morning, each armed with a 
big stick, suited to his taste — one with beautifully polished knobs 
on the heavy end of the stick and one with nails carefully dis- 
posed upon its surface, to emphasize the value of the weapon as a 
deterrent of force, and an incentive to peace — each swinging his little 



20 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

pacifier jauntily as he trudges sturdily or saunters leisurely along, speak- 
ing softly to those he passes about mollycoddles, cowards, and the Ananias 
club. How certain it would be that no thought of violence would disturb 
the peaceful serenity of such a happy community. It is an excellent 
motto, but hard to live up to; and we shall do well not to underesti- 
mate the difficulty. Nations, hke individuals, when they carry big 
sticks, seem predisposed to raise their voices. 

It is said that the disbandment of our armies after the Civil War 
demonstrates that military training will not create a miHtaristic senti- 
ment in the United States, but it is not from those who have had actual 
experience in war and have gone through the pit of hell, or at least 
looked into its mouth, that we need fear militaristic sentiment so much 
as from the man who has merely worn the trappings and studied the 
manual of arms. It is the little knowledge that is the dangerous thing. 

Has consideration been given to the political dangers of an organ- 
ized citizen soldiery containing millions of men, who would not regard 
the military work seriously because war would not really seem imminent ? 

The suggestion of a new sort of army — a continental army — is 
obviously due to the desire to meet the difficulty of putting the militia 
under direct federal control; for it proposes nothing but a partially 
trained force of volunteers. Does it not seem far wiser to extend federal 
support to the militia upon condition that the training shall comply 
with federal requirements ? 

Has not Schornhorst shown us our true military policy, when by 
transferring every man to the reserve as soon as he had been trained, 
the active army of 42,000 men, to which he was restricted by the Peace 
of Paris, became the army of 150,000 that contributed so powerfully to 
the defeat of Napoleon ? Why should we not adopt the poUcy of train- 
ing our soldiers as intensively as possible and then transfer them, as soon 
as they are trained, to a reserve receiving proper pay from the gov- 
ernment, and subject to be called to the colors whenever needed ? Would 
not such a plan give us a vastly superior army to that available in any 
other way ? Would it be any less a citizen soldiery because it had one 
year's continuous training instead of three months' training for each of 
four years? Would not the interference with business or professional 
activity be far less and the cost to the country far less than under the 
plans proposed ? 

If some mechanical training accompanied the miUtary training, it 
might extend the period of active service; but might it not equip the 
soldier for a more useful citizenship and make enlistment more attract- 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 21 

ive ? The same thought applies to the education of the reserve of 
trained officers that should be provided. 

Universal military service would undoubtedly distribute the military 
burden, but it would create the burden for the sake of distributing it. 
It is not "shirking" to oppose the imposition on our people of a burden 
which it is both unnecessary and unwise for them to assume. By making 
service in the army and in the militia of real value to those who enlist, 
as well as to the nation, we should create a military system that would 
justify itself, and that would secure forces amply sufficient for our 
defense. There should be no illusion as to the effect — if not the pur- 
pose — of doing more than this. Our sons, once trained, would be 
available for war beyond our borders, and even statutory declarations 
against using them there would not remove the consequences of their 
availability.' 

It may well be questioned whether the agitation for universal mili- 
tary training or any other form of conscription does not tend to discredit 
and to prevent a degree of actual military preparation which might 
otherwise receive popular support. 

It is said that what we lack in the United States is discipline, 
and that military discipline will supply the need. We do want 
civic discipline, the conscious and willing subordination of imme- 
diate individual freedom of action to concerted and co-operative 
control for the good of the community, a control in determining 
the extent and character and purpose of which the disciplined 
shall have a voice. Shall we get this from a training that consists 
chiefly if not wholly in obedience to orders? No military discipline 
in or out of the schools can be made much more than this for the 
great mass under the practical limitations that must prevail. Few, 
indeed, will be the individuals who will be trained to direct others, 
and these few will learn chiefly to direct the others in a routine 
essentially arbitrary and mechanical. 

Their's not to reason why, 
Their's but to do and die, 

^ On January 4, 1916, the Associated Press sent out from Washington a dispatch 
for which it claimed exceptionally reliable information, stating that: "a navy equal 
in strength to those of any two world powers except Great Britain, and an army pre- 
pared to fight for the integrity of the Pan-American idea anywhere in Pan-America is 
the ultimate aim of the plans of the military experts." 

On January 6, 1916, Secretary Garrison said before the Military Committee of 
the House of Representatives: "We have determined and announced that the sover- 
eignty of the other republics of this hemisphere shall remain inviolable and must 
therefore at all times stand ready to make good our position in this connection." 



22 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

is the ideal of military discipline, the quality we are called upon to praise 
and admire in the soldier. It is an admirable ideal for military purposes, 
but not so good for civic purposes, and what we are now discussing is the 
alleged civic advantage of military discipline upon the young manhood 
of the country. 

As to the suggestion that military drill in the pubUc schools would 
be justified on the ground of physical development President Lowell of 
Harvard says that his experience on the Boston School Board convinced 
him that military drill in the public schools is a mistake; that the boys 
tired of drill, and were disinclined later to join the militia. He thinks 
other kinds of physical training are better, and that while his objection 
does not apply to colleges, drill should be a very small part of military 
training. 

Former President Eliot says: 

I feel strongly another objection to military drill in secondary schools, namely 
that it gives no preparation whatever for the real work of a soldier. In the Boston 
High Schools military drill includes nothing but the manual of arms, company move- 
ments on even surfaces, and a few very simple battalion movements, mostly those of 
parade. The real work of a soldier is to dig in the ground with pick and shovel; to 
carry a burden of about fifty pounds on long marches; to run very short distances 
carrying a similar burden; and to shoot accurately with a rifle; throw hand grenades; 
and use rapidly and well machine guns and artillery. Military drill in schools has 
no tendency to prepare boys to do the real work of a soldier. The Swiss do not begin 
to train their young men for their army until they are about twenty years of age, 
except that they encourage voluntary rifle clubs for practice in shooting. 

Assuming, however, that there would be both physical and disci- 
plinary advantages in mihtary training, it would not follow that we 
should obtain these advantages by compulsory military service. 

It is said that military training would increase respect for law and 
order, and the proof of this is said to be the comparative statistics of 
crimes of violence in Switzerland and the United States. How about 
the comparative respect for law in England and in the United States, 
although England has not adopted universal military training ? 

If we were situated as is Switzerland, where any war or serious 
threat of war is certain to require the military service of every able- 
bodied citizen, and where, even then, every unit in the small population 
must have the very highest military efficiency practicable, we might 
justify universal military training, in and out of the schools. We may 
be sure that any attempt with us to train a citizen soldiery under the 
Swiss system would almost certainly be perfunctory, because it would 
not be taken seriously. We must never forget that the discipline which 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 23 

Germany has given her citizens is a discipline which is not confined to 
their service in the army. The German people are trained to regard the 
state as the instrumentality through and by which they — each of them 
individually and all of them collectively — can best advance their inter- 
ests — can best secure for themselves the necessities and the pleasures of 
life. Behind even the verhoten is a larger consciousness of the advantages 
of communal action, a larger practical realization of those advantages, 
than obtains in any other great nation today. 

Germany's industrial and social progress has been attained in spite 
of, and not because of, her system of enforced military training and 
service. Undoubtedly the conviction which has existed in Germany 
that war was a real and constantly impending probability has had an 
influence, perhaps a determining influence, in securing the adoption of 
certain policies, such as the government ownership and operation of 
railroads, and the development of waterways in connection with the 
railroads as a "co-ordinated" and interdependent transportation system. 
The same conviction of the imminence of war has perhaps had its influ- 
ence in securing some of the social and industrial legislation which sound 
views of public policy justify and demand without the slightest regard 
to their military value. There is no evidence, however, that these social 
and industrial results in Germany were due to the military training of 
German citizens. Prussia is not the portion of the German Empire in 
which we find the most inspiring examples of peaceful progress. Again 
I find Paul Rohrback instructive when he points out the antagonism 
of " the material provincialism of the small state and the old individualism 
of the German races, which in this case has been hardened and quickened 
by the long political separation." He says: 

But we Germans of the Empire err if we think that this explanation settles the 
question. An equal share of the responsibility for the existing estrangement should 
be laid at the door of the North German element which has gained hegemony in the 
new Empire, and which shows its inabihty to achieve in the world what one may call 
moral conquests. The shortsighted inflexibility of the North German, and most 
especially of the Prussian character, which can produce great things only among its 
own people, is easily explained by the course of its history. It deserves great, and 
perhaps even the sole, credit for the growth of Prussia to the state of a world-power, 
and therefore, indirectly, for the union of the greater number of integral parts of the 
old Empire into the new Empire. Nevertheless, this special side of the Prussian char- 
acter is developing more and more into an actual source of danger for our national 
future, especially in its modem unpleasant variations. 

No; German social and industrial progress is not due to military 
training, but, as Paul Rohrback says, to German industry, and to the 



24 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

fact that Germany has made more progress toward having her govern- 
ment perform the true functions of government in its internal and peace- 
ful relations to its citizens than has been made by other governments, 
especially our own. Unless our preparation is not only planned for 
defense and is, as far as practicable, unadapted for aggression, the prepa- 
ration itself will add to the possibilities of war, because we shall be less 
afraid of the consequences of mistake and less on our guard against those 
who from ignorance or self-interest seek to persuade us to maintain 
unsound national ideals or purposes. 

Other nations may of course make the same sort of mistake; may 
permit themselves to assert against us interests that are not their true 
interests or that they have no right to assert. We may have to defend 
ourselves against aggression born of their mistakes, but so far as actual 
war is concerned we are in far less danger from the selfishness or muddled 
thinking of other nations than we are from the selfishness or muddled 
thinking of our own people. We are defended, not only by our geo- 
graphical separation from Europe and Asia, but by the character of our 
country itself, its extent and physical conformation and, more than all 
this, by the conflicting interests of our possible enemies. The balance 
of power in Europe has always been more of a defense to us than even 
our isolation. The conquest of the United States has been impossible — 
the attempt unthinkable — except by land and naval forces too large to 
be spared from Europe. It was largely because of this condition that 
we succeeded in the war of the Revolution, and got off with a little 
humiliation in 1812. Only the creation in Europe as a result of this war 
of new conditions in which one or other of the contending parties is 
left so completely crushed as to destroy all fear from that nation in the 
mind of the victor or victors can possibly threaten us, and then the victor 
must have some motive, must see some advantage in making war upon us. 

No European nation can have any real motive to attack the United 
States except to prevent us from asserting claims or exercising rights in 
other countries which are not in accordance with its interests. There 
can be no motive of conquest, and it is equally unthinkable that any 
European nation would make war on us to impose discriminatory com- 
mercial or political conditions upon us, or merely to punish us or to loot 
us or force from us a money payment as the price of peace. Theoretically 
any of these things might happen; practically they can be dismissed from 
serious consideration. 

If the United States becomes involved in war it will be because it 
asserts some right or claims some privilege outside of its own territory, 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 2$ 

the assertion of which right or privilege runs counter to the interests 
of some foreign power, or it will be because some foreign power asserts 
a similar right or privilege against us. We cannot of ourselves control 
the motives or the actions of other powers except by international agree- 
ment, backed by force or by measures short of force which may be 
equally effective for the purpose. Our first concern, however, is with 
our own attitude toward these matters. What are the rights or privi- 
leges we claim or wish to claim outside of our own territory ? Are we 
claiming or are we likely to claim any rights or privileges that are Ukely 
to be challenged by other nations ? What are the foundations for such 
claims ? Are they sound in principle and in law ? How important to 
us is their assertion if challenged ? Are they important enough to fight 
for? Are there other remedies than war available to us if they are 
challenged ? What are they ? Is our claim similar in character to that 
of other nations, and should we take steps to unite all nations who are 
interested in the same essential claim for its defense against a possible 
aggressor ? Should we unite North and South America in the defense 
of our common interests, and if this seems desirable, why should we draw 
an artificial Une excluding agreements with European nations in matters 
where our common interests are as clear as, or clearer than, our Pan- 
American interests ? 

To reach right answers to these questions we must above all 
clear our minds of the false doctrine that enduring economic interests 
can be promoted by force. Undoubtedly temporary advantages 
can be secured by the exploitation of other nations, especially — perhaps 
exclusively — undeveloped peoples and undeveloped lands; but in the long 
run the commerical interests of the world are mutual. Our prosperity 
is dependent upon prosperity elsewhere. Every nation obtains materials 
or goods from others and sells to others its own surplus of materials 
or goods. Every nation has most to gain by helping to advance 
the trade of the world, to make all nations prosperous while fostering 
its own commerce by every means consistent with sound economic 
laws. So far as the happiness of the mass of mankind or of the 
masses of any particular nation is concerned, the adjustment of world- 
commerce to the natural laws of commerce wholly overbalances the 
temporary advantages of exploitation. Otherwise it would be to the 
economic interest of this nation to encourage the continuation of 
the war in Europe so that we might continue our artificial trade in 
munitions. We owe much to Norman Angell for his convincing 
presentation in effective popular form of the economic fallacy that 



26 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

world-commerce follows national lines and that imperialism is com- 
mercially profitable. 

The imperialistic theory is built upon the history of the British 
Empire and upon a misunderstanding of that history, especially upon a 
failure to comprehend that economic conditions are now so radically and 
irrevocably different that the British Empire itself is commercially and 
politically revolutionized. The history of England cannot be repeated 
any more than can the history of Rome, and wise men would not desire 
to repeat either if they could. We cannot ignore the process by which 
the world has been convinced that the welfare of the mass of the people 
is the real test of national success. Privilege may gain from exploitation, 
but not democracy; and democracy has come to stay as the economic, 
social, and intellectual ideal of civilization even more than as a political 
ideal. This will be clearer to mankind after this war, and we may suspect 
that it is becoming clearer and clearer during the war. Right now in 
the trenches no power can keep the soldier from thinking and thinking 
about the state and his relation to it. Even if he is led to magnify the 
value of organization and efl&ciency, he intends to ask for organization 
and efficiency in his interest and not in the interests of privilege 
or class. 

The very first thing that we Americans should consider today is 
the relation which we wish our government to assume toward us as 
individuals and toward other nations. Our whole attitude toward this 
war and its results depends upon our conception of the function of the 
state. What are our ideals of the individual life and of community 
life? Do we conceive that the most desirable life for ourselves — for 
individual men — is a life in which there is the least possible restraint 
upon individual freedom of action, not only the action of each man in 
those things that concern him alone — if, indeed, there are any such 
things — but also in those things that affect others, leaving the result of 
the conflict between individuals to be decided by the relative strength 
or cunning of the individual? There are those who, consciously or 
otherwise, really desire a world in which the strong, the astute, the intel- 
lectually and physically superior, are to have the fullest freedom to 
enjoy every advantage which they can obtain over their inferiors. If 
they are shrewder, if more far-seeing, if they are stronger, more vigorous 
physically and intellectually, they contend that it is their right to anti- 
cipate those who are less alert, less far-seeing, less cunning, in seizing the 
things or the positions that are available, and that, having seized them, 
it is their vested right to hold them, even when it becomes clear that these 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 27 

things and these points of vantage are essential to the community as a 
whole and to the general mass of mankind. Men who hold this view 
regard it as a merit, as a demonstration of worth, that they foresaw what 
some day the community would need, some natural resource, some par- 
ticular piece of property, the potential value of which was not generally 
appreci3,ted at the time, and that they acquired it so that in the day of 
need they could profit from the needs of their fellows. We shall have to 
get rid of this idea in our individual and national Ufe if we are to get rid 
of the most prolific source of war in the field of international relations. 

Let us not confuse creative industry with mere shrewdness or fore- 
sight or superior mental or physical capacity. Superiority of this kind 
should have no reward for itself, but only for its exercise for the benefit 
of others, for the community as a whole. When it confines itself to 
forecasting the future and seizing now those things that are to be valuable 
hereafter, it has no real claim to the gratitude or the respect of others. 
It has added nothing to the wealth or the welfare of mankind. It may be 
difficult to draw the Une, but it is none the less certain that there is a line 
of distinction between creative and predatory wealth; and the duty of the 
community is to draw the line as rapidly as it can discern where it really 
lies, and to approximate it even when its exact location is not entirely 
clear. It is the business of the community to protect community inter- 
ests and to promote community welfare. If there is anything clear in 
our philosophy or our history it is that civilization is developing in this 

direction: 

With thousand shocks that come and go, 

With agonies, with energies, 
With overthrowings, and with cries, 

And undulations to and fro. 

We know now that success in war depends — after the first shock — 
on social and industrial solidarity far more than upon the number of 
trained soldiers that can be placed in the field. It is easier to enlist men 
and to train them if the front can be held for a time — in our case if the 
first invading expedition can be held off or seriously crippled — than 
it is to organize the national economic and industrial forces to support the 
troops if they are to be successful under the conditions of modern warfare. 
In his annual message of December 7 President Wilson emphasized our 
duty in this regard: 

While we speak of the preparation of the nation to make sure of her security and 
her effective power we must not fall into the patent error of supposing that her real 
strength comes from armaments and mere safeguards of written law. It comes, of 
course, from her people, their energy, their success in their undertakings, their free 



28 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

opportunity to use the natural resources of our great home land and of the lands outside 
our continental borders which look to us for protection, for encouragement, and for 
assistance in their development, from the organization and freedom and vitality of our 
economic life. 

The domestic questions which engaged the attention of the last congress are more 
vital to the nation in this its time of test than at any other time. We cannot ade- 
quately make ready for any trial of our strength unless we wisely and promptly direct 
the force of our laws into these all-important fields of domestic action. 

He then proceeds to select one pressing economic problem to which 
to direct particular attention. He says: 

In the meantime may I make this suggestion? The transportation problem is 
an exceedingly serious and pressing one in this country. There has from time to time 
of late been reason to fear that our railroads would not much longer be able to cope 
with it successfully as at present equipped and co-ordinated. I suggest that it would 
be wise to provide for a commission of inquiry to ascertain by a thorough canvass of 
the whole question whether our laws as at present framed and administered are as 
serviceable as they might be in the solution of the problem. It is obviously a problem 
that lies at the very foundation of our eflSciency as a people. Such an inquiry ought 
to draw out every circumstance and opinion worth considering, and we need to know 
all sides of the matter if we mean to do anything in the field of federal legislation. 

The issue thus raised will be found to go far deeper than mere changes 
in "the process of regulation." No lesson of the war has been more 
clearly taught than that efficient transportation is of the very essence of 
military efficiency and strength. It is equally true, as President Wilson 
says, that the transportation problem in peace "lies at the very founda- 
tion of our efficiency as a people." Our present method of dealing with it 
is increasingly unsatisfactory to the private interests involved, and it is 
not satisfactory to the public. We have secured many improvements 
by adopting public regulation, but as this regulation proceeds it becomes 
more and more apparent that the transportation system of the country 
is essentially one interrelated and interdependent whole. There may 
always be a rivalry in economy and efficiency of service, but competition 
for traffic is moderated by a division of territory, or a gentlemen's 
agreement, while competition in rates has almost disappeared. 

Governmental regulation has served to bring out clearly the essen- 
tially monopolistic character of our railroad system as a whole and the 
necessity of that "co-ordination" to which President Wilson refers. 
The question is whether co-ordination in the public service can be 
obtained so long as our railroads do not have a common financial interest 
as among themselves, but only a common financial interest as against the 
public. Can a public service which is essentially monopolistic be satis- 
factorily performed as a competitive enterprise ? Are we not losing the 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 29 

benefits of competition without obtaining the advantages of regulated 
monopoly ? We are certainly irritating and discouraging private enter- 
prise based on competitive profits. So unsatisfactory is the result 
that some of our leading railroad officials regard public ownership as the 
only escape from what they consider destructive regulation. The 
question is whether "co-ordination" can be obtained without public 
ownership. 

Germany has owned and operated her railroads, from the pomt of 
view of public service, in peace and in war, not from the point of view of 
profits, although the profits have been large. The probabilities seem 
to be that after the close of this war every railroad in Europe will be 
nationalized. Military reasons may be the determining factors in this 
result, but it may well be questioned whether any satisfactory solution 
of the transportation problem can be reached in any other way. 
Whether our government should take over our railroads and when and 
upon what conditions may raise many questions of expediency, but 
if we are to treat the issue with open mind it is important that we 
should understand that if, in the public interest, the government should 
do so, it will not be invading the domain of private enterprise, but will 
merely be taking back to itself a function of government which, for what 
seemed sufficient reasons of expediency, it had previously delegated to 
private agencies. 

I take it we shall all agree that if there is something which it is the 
true function of government to perform, that thing will never be per- 
formed as it should be until the government performs it. We may 
disagree about what is the true function of government; but once it is 
determined that on principle the performance of a particular service is 
a function of government, that means, if it means anything, that under 
right conditions of government it will be better performed by the govern- 
ment than if left to private enterprise. If a government is not per- 
forming all of the functions of government it is to that extent a failure as 
a government. The results must continue to be less satisfactory and 
less efficient than they should be and can be if the government is per- 
forming all of its functions, is qualified to perform them, and is perform- 
ing them properly. Now, nothing is more clearly settled in the law of this 
country and in the principles upon which that law is based than that 
railroads as common carriers are performing a function of government. 
The Supreme Court of the United States, and many other courts, have 
so held. (See United States v. Joint Tariff Association, 171 U.S., 505, 
570; Talcott V. Pine Grove, 23 Federal Cases, 652, etc.) Indeed, the 



30 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

construction and control of the public highway is historically and on 
principle one of the first of the functions of government; and a railroad 
is a public highway. My purpose in discussing this matter has been 
to indicate how deep the issues of industrial mobilization go. In 
England it already involves the relations of the trade unions to the 
government. 

It is insisted by some that the abolition of war or even its substantial 
diminution is an idle dream; that we may be reasonably certain that for 
one reason or another this country will be involved in war within a 
comparatively short time. Very well. It is now clear that industrial 
mobilization is as essential to modern war as is military mobilization, 
and such mobilization cannot be effectively made after hostilities occur 
unless the government already has the powers and is exercising the 
activities essential to effective mobilization. It is even more difficult 
to agree upon the principles and to create the machinery for industrial 
mobilization than for military mobilization, and lack of actual experience 
in applying the principles and operating the machinery may be dis- 
astrous in the one case as in the other. Do the prophets of war propose 
to face now the problems of economic and industrial mobilization? 
If they do, it will be necessary to abandon some dogmatic assumptions 
which have heretofore formed and still form so large a part of our political 
thinking. 

One of the most significant things in the development of all modern 
thought has been the decline in the acceptance of dogma. Outside 
of the exact sciences, like mathematics, we have learned to look with 
suspicion and distrust on dogmatic statement of laws or principles. 
William G. Sumner says: "If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doc- 
trines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject, 
because doctrines get inside of a man's own reason and betray him against 
himself." Consciously and unconsciously, the pragmatic philosophy 
is succeeding the dogmatic, in science as it is in theology. Experiment 
is succeeding assumption as the sure foundation of human progress. In 
no field is this so important as in the field of poUtical and social science — 
of nothing is it so true as of government. In the United States we have 
been particularly in danger of dogmatic error because of the wide 
acceptance of the proposition that that government is best which 
governs least, a dogmatic principle as vicious and unsound as the opposite 
dogma upon which socialism is based; for the dogma that the state 
should directly cover the whole field of human industry is equally fal- 
lacious. The truth, as usual, lies between. Government is not best 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 31 

when it governs least; nor is it best when it governs most. Govern- 
ment is best when it is doing well whatever will promote the welfare 
of the community most if done by the community than if left to be 
done by part of the community. And yet, progress is unquestionably in 
the direction of the extension of governmental activities into fields 
heretofore left to private enterprise, and we must be open-minded toward 
further movement in that direction. Germany is strong today in war, 
not only because she is prepared for war, but because she has gone 
farther than other nations in the assumption by her government of those 
social and industrial responsibilities which government should assume 
whenever it is apparent that, by so doing, the welfare of the nation — 
the greatest good to the greatest number — will be promoted. She has 
not accepted socialism, but she has been hampered by no dogma that the 
state must govern as Uttle as possible. To the extent to which she has 
accepted and acted upon the principle that it is the true function of 
government to do whatever will promote the interest of the community 
better if undertaken by the community than if left to private enterprise, 
just to that extent has she strengthened herself and secured the grate- 
ful loyalty of her people. So we, too, must proceed, if we would pre- 
pare for the constructive uses of peace that grateful recognition of the 
value of the nation to its people, and that patriotic support of the people 
for the nation, which we are being exhorted to prepare for the destructive 
purposes of war. 

In the long retrospect we shall find nothing clearer than that the 
evolution of government is steadily toward the assumption of new 
functions in the service of the people. Slowly, but surely, the movement 
has steadily gone forward in this direction, and always over the protests 
of those who have insisted that each advance was an unwarranted 
invasion of the field of private enterprise, of the rights and liberties of the 
individual. 

Even the collection of taxes for the support of the state was once 
farmed out to those who found in it an opportunity for private profit. 
The practice found its justification in the claim that an army of tax- 
collectors would be a public menace, and that the government could 
not possibly collect the taxes as economically and efficiently as private 
individuals. Today it would be a rare individual indeed who would 
conceive that it is not the function of the state directly to collect the 
taxes necessary for its own support. 

Time will not permit even the enumeration of other functions once 
supposed to be peculiarly private in their character, but which are 



32 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

now exercised by the government almost as a matter of course. It is 
almost axiomatic that the government shall conduct the Post-Ofl&ce, 
shall supply water, and shall extinguish fires. All of these things were 
once regarded as peculiarly sacred to private enterprise. I once repre- 
sented a cHent who owned and operated as a private profit-making enter- 
prise the sewer system of a thriving middle-western town which was 
prevented by financial limitations in its charter from performing this 
primary municipal function. In reading Ferrero I was amused and 
instructed by his account of the sources of the wealth and political power 
of Crassus in 69 B.C. Ferrero says : 

Since the houses at Rome were mostly built of wood, and the ^diles had so far 
failed to organize efficient measures of prevention, fires were at this time exceedingly 
frequent. This suggested to him a very ingenious idea. He organized a regular fire 
brigade from amongst his slaves, and established watch stations in every part of Rome. 
As soon as a fire broke out the watch ran to give notice to the brigade. The firemen 
turned out, but accompanied by a representative of Crassus who bought up, practically 
for nothing, the house which was on fire, and sometimes all the neighboring houses 
which happened to be threatened as well. The bargain once concluded, he had the 
fire put out and the house rebuilt. In this way he secured possession of a large number 
of houses at a trifling cost, and became one of the largest landlords at Rome, both in 
houses and land, which he was then able of course to exchange, to sell, and to buy up 
again, almost as he chose. Having become in this way one of the richest, if not the 
richest man in Rome, his power steadily increasing with every rise in the price of 
money, Crassus soon became a dominating figure in the Senate and the electorate, and 
indeed among all classes of the community. 

Indeed, when, later, an aedile who sprang from the common people ex- 
tended the function of government in Rome to include the operation of afire 
brigade, his activities were very much resented, and the privileged classes 
found it difficult to explain and impossible to justify his popularity with 
the people. I have no doubt that Rome rang with the same arguments 
about the invasion of the field of private enterprise with which the public 
ownership of railroads, and other public utilities is received in this 
country today. 

I am far from suggesting that, in any given community, at any given 
time, it would be axiomatic, or even expedient, for the government to 
undertake all or any of these enterprises. I am merely asserting that it 
is by no means true that it should not do so solely because it would 
conflict with some dogmatic conception of the state. It is a question of 
wise expediency under existing conditions in every case, remembering 
always that the inexorable law of social evolution is moving steadily 
toward the assumption of community functions by the community. 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 33 

The argument that the government has been too weak, too inefficient 
or too corrupt to be trusted with functions which might be performed 
by a better government is only a confession of the indictment against 
our government and us. It is quite true that, in determining the ulti- 
mate interests of the community we must look for the long result. We 
must not destroy the incentives that are essential to progress. The 
whole fabric of existing civilization is based upon the institution of pri- 
vate property, upon the conception that in the existing stage of human 
development the best and most effective way in which to advance the 
well-being of mankind is by an appeal to the self-interest or the necessi- 
ties of individuals; but even if we are entirely sure that necessity and 
financial gain are the most effective incentives to industry for the mass 
of mankind, are we not all coming to see that there is a point at which 
we overload the lure ? Once we rise above the pinch of poverty, and 
attain physical comfort and intellectual opportunity, are there not other 
incentives besides money that will stimulate and attract the very highest 
talent and the very greatest industry ? Is not this demonstrated by the 
financial sacrifices made by so many of the very best men in our pubHc 
service? You know what are the desires, the hopes, the aspirations 
that animate you. What is it that you think would prove most satis- 
fying and would call out the best there is in you ? Is it not the conscious 
and effective use of your faculties, for the accomphshment of things 
which you think are worth while? Is not the basis of real happiness 
obscured by false standards of success? There are dangers in democ- 
racy, just as there are dangers in privilege, but mankind has definitely 
discarded the old ideal of aristocracy. The purpose of civiUzation is not 
to produce an efflorescence, but to elevate the mass. The aristocracy 
of the future is to be an aristocracy of service not of privilege, of achieve- 
ment, not of acquisition. 

The very first and most essential of all our preparation must be 
to make our government — local, state, and national — what it should 
be. This is the service for which we need universal training, and a 
patriotism that is nobler and more useful than all the patriotism of war. 

It is suggested that we already respond to the civic appeal more 
easily than to the appeal for military sacrifice, but Hiram Maxim says: 

I wonder why it is that we are not as enthusiastic in this social service work as 
we are in attacking the problem of war. Is it that there is more glory and more that 
appeals to the martial imagination in attacking war and warriors than there is in the 
prosaic, tame, and glamourless enterprise of simply saving human life in peaceful pur- 
suits for the mere sake of saving it ? 



34 ' THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

Senator Root has recently made an eloquent appeal for military 
preparation, in which he said: 

Do not let us deceive ourselves. Adequate preparation for the preservation of 
our liberty means a vast expenditure, but it means more than that; it means a will- 
ingness for self-sacrifice, a spirit among our people, the length and breadth of the 
land, among the rich and the poor, among the highly educated and the graduates of 
the common school, among professional men, merchants and bankers, farmers and 
laborers — a national spirit among the people of the land, and a determination to pre- 
serve the liberty and justice of the American Republic, and to make a sacrifice of 
means and convenience, comfort, and if need be, of life, in the cause. 

To every word of this we should subscribe. But I wish the Senator 
had gone on to demonstrate — as he could do so well — that the patriotism 
and self-sacrifices of peace are of more transcendent importance, even 
as a preparation for war, than any present resolution of willingness to 
sacrifice "means and convenience, comfort, and if need be, of Ufe," upon 
the field of battle. I am not detracting in the least from the importance 
of making defensive miUtary preparations; but a determination to 
preserve the liberty and justice of the American Republic, and to make 
some sacrifice of means and convenience and comfort in the piping times 
of peace, will be our best preparation for war and our most likely insur- 
ance against it. 

Do not let us deceive ourselves. The United States of America, 
as a nation, is worth preserving, is entitled to our loyalty and devotion, 
only to the extent that it is an agency to promote the moral, intellectual, 
and physical well-being of its people, not some of its people, but all of its 
people — only to the extent that, in very truth, in the realities of the 
everyday life of the men, the women, and the children who inhabit it, 
its conscious ideal is the greatest good to the greatest number. To 
carry out that ideal means a vast expenditure, willingly and intelli- 
gently made; it means a preparedness for self-sacrifice in times of peace 
quite as much as in times of war — nay, a greater self-sacrifice, because 
the progress of civilization is measured by the extent to which peace 
supersedes and supplants war. It means a spirit among our people the 
length and breadth of the land, among the rich and the poor, among 
the highly educated and the graduates of the common school and those 
to whom fortune unhappily has given no schooling at all, among pro- . 
fessional men, merchants and bankers, farmers and laborers — a national 
spirit determined to make the American Republic an agency of liberty 
and justice at home and abroad. 

In the service of this ideal, let us destroy every special privilege and 
be prepared to sacrifice means and convenience and comfort and, if 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 35 

need be, life itself to protect that government and the people it governs 
against every assault by force or cunning, whether from within or from 
without. Let us make social justice and social service our national 
ideal; and to this end let us control and develop our national resources 
in times of peace, not only that they may be mobilized in time of war, 
but because a government which is performing this sort of service to 
its people will be thus most effectively organized for peace. By all 
means let us have an army and a navy adequate for the defense of such 
a nation, but let us realize that far more important than armies and 
navies are our national purposes and policies. 

Are we really without the desire and the hope that the United States 
may acquire exceptional advantages in the commercial development 
of other countries — let us say, in this hemisphere or parts of it, in Cuba 
and the West Indies, in Mexico and Central America ? Are we entirely 
free from the subconscious thought that here is our sphere of influence ? 
How far is this thought at the bottom of the modern development of the 
Monroe Doctrine, especially as conceived by Secretary Olney when he 
declared that "the United States is practically sovereign on this conti- 
nent" ? Is it because of its hoped-for economic advantages to us that 
we insist upon a doctrine which seems no longer to have any political 
justification? Certainly we are no longer in apprehension that our 
republican form of government would seriously be jeopardized if any 
European nation should acquire political dominion over, or should plant 
its colonies in. South America. Those countries repudiate and resent 
our assumption of a benevolent protectorate over their national interests. 
They look with suspicion upon all our declarations of disinterestedness, 
and point to our dealings with Mexico in the acquisition of Texas and 
California, and to other incidents in our history, as proof of the justice of 
their fears. Even the declaration of President Wilson, that this country 
will never again seek to acquire a foot of territory by force of arms, 
is regarded merely as the expression of a personal opinion, or as in the 
same class with the diplomatic assurance of pacific intention which has 
usually preceded the extension of the British, or the French, or the 
German, or the Italian domains. 

There is a clearer mutual understanding and a closer community of 
political and commercial interest between the principal countries of 
South America and the great nations of Europe than between those 
countries and ourselves. The ties of race and language and religion are 
closer. Few of our people understand how the eastward trend of the 
southern portion of this hemisphere brings South America into as close 



36 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

or closer proximity to Europe than to the United States, especially when 
available trade routes are taken into consideration. South American 
development has been financed in Europe, not in the United States, 
and to attempt to expand our commerce in that direction without assum- 
ing the large financial obligations that are essential to it is merely to 
work against the natural laws of trade. 

Pan-Americanism exalts physical geography, which is important; 
but commercial, intellectual, and racial geography is more important. 
Pan-Americanism must be based on and be measured by real mutuahty 
of interest and obUgation. We should recognize and strengthen our 
mutual interests with La tin- America; but we should not forget other 
equally or more important interests in Canada and Europe. The pres- 
ervation of existing political geography to the south of us against change 
by violence should tend to increase stability where this is especially 
desirable; but why should we insist that the Americas are a separate 
international unit over which the United States is to maintain a benevo- 
lent protectorate at its own risk, and without control over their domestic 
conditions or foreign poHcies ? 

To assert that the Monroe Doctrine is essential to our national 
safety has become an absurdity. Monarchical institutions no longer 
threaten our Republic. We have lived to see a republican form of gov- 
ernment firmly established in France, and to see constitutional monarchy 
develop steadily toward the essentials of representative democracy. 
We have lived for more than a century in immediate contact with a 
great, self-governing colony of England, with the result that we have 
influenced its institutions far more than it has influenced ours. The 
whole purpose of President Monroe's famous declaration, and the whole 
justification for making it, have undergone a transformation so complete 
that nothing but the lack of intelligent discussion of the question can 
explain the extent to which it is regarded as something as holy as the 
Ark of the Covenant by so many of the American people. 

It is safe to say that we beUeve in something called the Monroe Doc- 
trine because we do not understand it, and are making no attempt what- 
ever to define it or to appraise its value to us. Let us not confuse it 
with that doctrine which is practically recognized by all the great nations 
of the world, viz. : that wherever a nation is in fact so situated that the 
acquisition or control of immediately adjacent countries by great and 
powerful rivals would jeopardize its peace and security, that nation, in 
the exercise of its right of self-defense, can justly insist upon its rival 
refraining from such an extension of its domain. The point is well 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 37 

illustrated by the declaration of Paul Rohrbach with reference to the 
possible absorption of Holland by Germany. He says: "The resulting 
disturbance of the political equilibrium in Europe would be so distinctly 
in favor of Germany, that all the other states would be justified in 
rising in protest against it." The right of a nation to protect its vital 
interests has been universally recognized, subject always to the possible 
exercise of superior force to override the objection. No nation has 
questioned the right of another nation to assert its vital interests, 
although it may have questioned its power to maintain them. The issue 
is an issue of fact. Does the particular thing which is threatened 
jeopardize the vital interests of the protesting nation ? 

The Monroe Doctrine has never been accepted by other nations as 
sound in principle, although the acquiescence of Great Britain has pre- 
vented it from being challenged; but if we were frankly to assert that 
the acquisition of Mexico by a European nation would be regarded as 
an unfriendly act because it threatened the vital interests of the United 
States, it is exceedingly unlikely that there would be any attempt to 
deny that we were justified in interfering. Whether we should assert 
such an interest in the future of Mexico would depend upon the question 
of fact as to its influence upon our national security. Whether our inter- 
est would be admitted would depend upon the question of fact as to the 
effect of the proposed action upon the vital interests of this nation. It 
might depend upon our military abiUty to sustain our position; but 
what I am trying to make clear is that the validity of the Monroe Doc- 
trine depends upon principles of universal international apphcation, 
and not upon principles pecuUar to us or to the American continents. 

In the interests of national security, we should ourselves confine 
the Monroe Doctrine to these limits. In its present vague form it is 
a menace to our peace and to the peace of the world — all the more 
dangerous because we have not now, and we do not propose to have, 
miUtary force sufficient to maintain it if it should be seriously questioned. 
Nothing is so dangerous to peace as the assertion of a right which is 
offensive to others, which they believe to be unjustified, and which we 
are not, and do not expect to be, prepared to defend. It is in support 
of the broader Monroe Doctrine and incidentally to get the support of 
the Pacific Coast that the Navy League is insisting that we should have 
a navy on the Pacific stronger than Japan's and another navy on the 
Atlantic stronger than the navy of any other nation except England — a 
policy which fortunately, there seems to be no probability whatever of 
the United States being persuaded to adopt. And yet, if we do not have 



38 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

such a navy, I must agree with Homer Lea when he says that "the 
Monroe Doctrine, if not supported by naval and military power sufficient 
to enforce its observance by all nations singly and in coaHtion, becomes 
a factor more provocative of war than any other national policy ever 
attempted in modern or ancient times." 

Our greatest duty, therefore, is not to build fleets to maintain the 
Monroe Doctrine, but it is to consider whether the Monroe Doctrine, 
in any other sense than the protection of our vital national interests, is 
worth the risk of war and the cost of preparing for it. If it cannot be 
justified upon the ground of defense, can it be justified upon the ground 
of self-interest? The Monroe Doctrine may have helped drive Maxi- 
milian out of Mexico. It may have served us in some indeterminate 
directions during the first half of our national existence, but if it has 
profited us in any other way the evidence does not seem to be available. 
Certainly we can show no financial profit, and no prospect in this direction. 

It may not be clear that our trade in Latin America would have been 
substantially greater if it had been colonized by European nations and 
developed under their flags, but it certainly is not clear that this would 
not have been the case. Our total trade with South America for the 
year ending June 30, 1913 (unaffected by war), was a Uttle over $360,- 
000,000. Our trade with Canada the same year was over $535,000,000. 
Approximately $162,000,000 of our South American trade was with 
Brazil alone, the greater portion being imports of coffee, which we may 
safely assume would have sought a market in this country no matter under 
what flag the coffee had been raised. It seems equally true that our 
sales of agricultural implements to South America would doubtless have 
been as great if the flag of England or Germany or France or Italy or 
Spain had been flying in the southern portion of the hemisphere. 

I am not regretting the poHtical independence of the South American 
repubhcs. On the contrary, I share in the feeling of pride in their 
achievements, which is perhaps not justified by our contribution to that 
result. I am merely pointing out that the further assertion of the Mon- 
roe Doctrine would seem to have no justification in the commercial results 
obtained by it; and the extension of our trade in the future will depend 
upon considerations with which the Monroe Doctrine has nothing what- 
ever to do. But even if it were true that its abandonment would result 
in some diminution of our commerce, which I do not believe, the loss 
would be utterly insignificant in comparison with the expenditure we 
shall have to make if the Monroe Doctrine is to be anything but a 
source of weakness and of danger. 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 39 

There is a widespread popular impression that Germany has ulterior 
designs on South America, and that, if successful in the present war, she 
will restrict the trade of other nations and discriminate against this 
country. I find no justification for this opinion. I have no doubt that 
Germany resents and disagrees with the doctrine of Monroe. I have no 
doubt that, whether successful or unsuccessful in the war, she will seek 
to push her trade and commerce in South America. But all of the 
indications are that Germany has been looking to the Near and Middle 
East as the field peculiarly adapted for her political and commercial 
expansion. It is the Bagdad Railroad and the ancient Babylonian 
empire upon which she seems to have fixed her desires, and with respect 
to which she so bitterly resents the restrictions for which she holds 
England responsible. There is much misunderstanding about German 
colonization in South America. It is estimated that the total German 
immigration now in Argentina, for instance, is only 30,000, while there 
are 950,000 Italians, and 150,000 French.^ I have been unable to obtain 
the total figures for Brazil; but in 1910 the immigration was 30,857 
Portuguese; 20,843 Spanish; 14,163 Italians; 3,902 Germans, etc. 

I shall refer to only one other matter of this character, and that is 
our relations with Japan; and I select them because we are supposed 
by many to be in greater danger of a collision with Japan than with any 
other nation, unless it be Germany. It is said that Japan is likely to 
attack us, because we offer an enticing opportunity for loot, because 
Japan wishes to acquire the Philippines, and because she wishes to 
force us to accept her people as immigrants and to treat them on a parity 
with the immigrants from other countries. 

I think we may dismiss, as unworthy of our own intelligence, the 
suggestion that Japan would make a wanton attack upon this country 
merely in the hope of exacting an indemnity or of pillaging our Pacific 
Coast. Japan has done nothing that would justify the assumption that 
she would be influenced by such a motive, even if she could be persuaded 

'The ofi&cial immigration figures in Argentina for the period from 1857 to 1908 
are as follows: 

Italian 1,799,423 

Spanish 79S>243 

French 188,316 

English 42,765 

Austro- Hungarian S9,8oo 

German 40,655 

Swiss 28,344 

Belgian 20,668 

Other 203,242 

The emigration was a little less than half the inamigration. 



40 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

that she would succeed. No nation in the history of the world has so 
clearly earned the right to have its motives, its intelligence, and its 
achievements treated with respect than has Japan. Her ambition is 
clearly to secure the respect of the civilized world, and to deserve it. 
In my judgment she will be more punctilious in respect to international 
morals than many nations that boast a broader civilization. But if 
nothing else would restrain her, she is too intelligent not to know that 
all she could secure in the way of pecuniary advantage would have to 
be returned many fold in the competition of armaments that would 
inevitably ensue, until this country had made her atone for every wrong 
that she had done to us. The day of the international marauder on 
any such scale as this is over. 

The Open Door in China is one of the issues which are thought to 
be provocative of trouble with Japan. Hiram Maxim says a Japanese 
diplomat asked him by what logic we can proclaim America for the 
Americans and disclaim Japan's right equally to proclaim Asia for the 
Asiatics. What is the answer? Baron Shibusawa recently said in 
my hearing that Japan was especially desirous of cordial relations with 
the United States for three reasons: first, because Japan recognized 
many obligations of gratitude to the United States for our conspicuous 
part in the acceptance and development of modern conditions and insti- 
tutions by Japan; secondly, because one-fourth of Japan's foreign com- 
merce was with the United States, and Japan was anxious to retain and 
increase it; thirdly, because the greatest world-problem was the adjust- 
ment and mutual understanding of oriental and occidental civilization 
and that Japan believed the two nations best adapted to bring this 
about were Japan and the United States, working sympathetically 
together for this purpose. Such speeches may be only international 
compliments; but they deserve thoughtful consideration. 

As to the Philippines, there is no evidence that Japan desires them 
at this time, when her hands are full to overflowing with opportunities 
in Korea and China. And what is our policy in the Philippines ? Do 
we really intend to establish there an independent nation ? Do we pro- 
pose to retain control over its international policies after we have given 
it independence ? If we do not control, do we none the less propose to 
protect the Philippine nation against the consequences of its own policies, 
or to guarantee its sovereignty or territorial integrity? If we seek to 
retain no special advantages over other nations in the commercial 
development of the Philippine Islands, and are animated by sincerely 
benevolent motives, should we not seek to secure international guaranties 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 41 

that would be far more effective than anything that we alone can do to 
assure independence of the nation for whose existence we are to be 
responsible ? Is it at all clear that Japan would not gladly join in such 
an arrangement ? 

The remaining source of future trouble with Japan is the policy 
which we adopt toward her with respect to immigration and the rights of 
her people while residing in this country. There can be no question that 
Japan resents the manner in which her people are being treated on the 
Pacific Coast. Whether California is justified or not in the substance 
of what she seeks by restricting the rights of the Japanese to acquire 
and hold land is entirely outside the point. The citizens of the United 
States are under restriction with respect to land ownership in Japan, 
and this subject is susceptible of diplomatic adjustment on a basis that 
will recognize the mutual self-respect of both countries. Japan has given 
evidence of the most substantial character of her desire to meet and treat 
this issue in a broad-minded and practical way. She asks merely that 
it shall be so treated. If we treat her thus, and have California treat 
her thus, we shall do more to reduce the probability of friction with Japan 
than all the naval and military preparations we shall make against her. 

It is said, however, that we must enormously increase our navy 
if we are to protect our interests in the Panama Canal. Before the Canal 
was constructed the argument ran quite the other way. The construc- 
tion of the Canal was so to facilitate the passage of our fleet from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, or the reverse, that it would double the efficiency 
of the fleet, and constitute an asset of incalculable value in the event of 
war. Now, however, it has become merely an extension of our coast 
line, a vulnerable point which it is essential to take extraordinary pre- 
cautions to protect. If this is true, we have gained only a military 
liability by the construction of the Canal, having admitted the merchant 
vessels of all nations to the Canal on a parity with our own. Proximity 
to the Canal is our only advantage over other nations so far as our 
foreign commerce is concerned. If it is to take a huge navy to protect 
it so that it may be used for the passage of our fleets in time of war, there 
would seem to have been little net gain from a military point of view. 
Should we not be far better off if, having made this splendid contribu- 
tion to the commerce of the world, we should now completely neutralize 
the Canal, under international guaranties, in which we should invite 
all civilized nations to join ? The basis of the agreement might be either 
the closing of the Canal to the warships of belligerent nations, or the 
opening of the Canal to all belligerents alike, upon the condition that 



42 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

no encounter should be permitted to take place within a specified dis- 
tance from either entrance. The practicability of this plan would neces- 
sarily depend upon the extent to which the Canal could be secured from 
injury or a surprise attack from some belligerent who did not respect 
its obligations. Either plan would probably result in greater protection 
of our interests in the Canal than any security derived from the size 
of the fleet available for its defense in the event of war between the 
United States and any first-class naval power. 

But the necessity of naval protection for the Canal must be considered 
in the light of General Goethals' testimony before the subcommittee 
of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives. 
General Goethals testified that on the assumption that the naval contest 
had been ended, and that the control of the sea rested with the enemy, 
so that the enemy's transports were free and able to land troops, a force 
of 25,000 men with proper land defenses would be able to hold off an 
invading expedition against the Panama Canal at least as long as the 
time that was necessary for the capture of Port Arthur. If this be 
true, it would seem clear that the defense of the Panama Canal would 
necessitate no departure from the defensive naval pohcy in which the 
submarine would largely replace the dreadnaught and the battle cruiser. 
The Canal is peculiarly adapted for defense by submarines and there 
is a difference of expert opinion as to whether its land defenses should 
not be confined to defense against raids. 

It will naturally be said that even if we abandon the policy of 
extending our commercial interests by force or by the show of force 
other nations will not do so, and unless we are prepared to assert our 
rights in foreign lands our financial interests will suffer, our pride be 
humbled, and our people be humihated and abused. There are cases 
in which we must be prepared to send warships into foreign seas to 
enforce respect for the flag of the United States, and for those who are 
entitled to its protection. The policies I am suggesting would never 
leave this country without a navy containing sufficient warships to 
compel the respect of or to punish those inferior nations from which we 
need have any apprehension of wanton insult or ill treatment of our 
nationals. No civilized nation of consequence would in time of peace 
refuse atonement for insult or injury to any of our people. We may 
conclusively assume that every reparation would be made, and every 
precaution would be taken against the repetition of such an incident. 
Nothing but the wilUngness of the offending nation to proceed to war 
would call for a larger navy than we should have; and our naval 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 43 

policies in the event of war would depend upon, and be determined by, 
the larger considerations to which I have referred. Assuming that 
we were protected at home against invasion, we might effectively 
resort to other weapons than the use of force. There are some con- 
ceptions of national honor and of what is essential for its vindication 
that are reminiscent of the code duello; but they cannot long survive that 
discredited institution. 

To the contention that we must have a navy adequate to protect 
our foreign trade and keep open the highways of commerce, it seems 
sufficient to reply that unless we develop a real merchant marine our 
foreign commerce would be carried on neutral ships; that no blockade 
of our extensive coasts could be made effective; and that nothing but 
the dominion of the seas could give us an assurance of uninterrupted 
foreign trade if private commerce is not to be safe under the sanctions 
of international law. General Greene has aptly said: 

We do not need and will not have in this country an army of seven hundred 
thousand men, as some ill-balanced enthusiasts demand; we are not compelled to and 
we will not enter the battleship race of England and Germany. England must run 
this race or die. We are not so situated, and it would be supreme folly for us to waste 
our resources or our thoughts on any such contest. 

But a defensive mihtary poUcy does not assume a poHcy of inter- 
national isolation. If there is anything which this war and the issues 
arising out of this war have made clear, it is that no nation can longer 
live unto itself, and least of all that a great commercial nation like the 
United States can refrain from active and direct participation in the 
determination of those policies and the creation of those agencies by 
which law is to be substituted for war and the peaceful development 
of the world is to be assured. The peaceful development of the United 
States is indissolubly linked with the peaceful developmxcnt of Europe 
and the world. We can no longer refrain from alliances because they 
may involve us in issues from which, thus far, we have happily been free. 
We must take our place in the family of nations and assume our full 
measure of responsibility. Nor need we despair of making substantial 
progress toward the substitution of peaceful means for the settlement 
of international differences by force of arms. 

The declaration of President Wilson with regard to Pan- 
Americanism in his annual message should serve the useful purpose 
of directing public attention to the inapplicability of the old concep- 
tions of the Monroe Doctrine to existing conditions. If this nation is 
really definitely to abandon the role "which it was always difficult to 
maintain without offense to the pride of the peoples whose freedom of 



44 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

action we sought to protect, and without provoking serious miscon- 
ceptions of our motives," and is to interpret the Monroe Doctrine as an 
invitation to "a full and honorable association, as of partners, between 
ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest of all America, north and 
south," it marks a tremendous forward step in the national policies of 
the United States. It must not be forgotten, however, that the invita- 
tion has not yet been accepted, and, above all, that it has not yet been 
embodied in any international undertakings that can be regarded as a 
substitute for the doctrine of Monroe. 

The President's message is admirable so far as it goes, but it leaves 
unanswered the question as to what this country would propose to do 
in any of the contingencies to which I have referred. Are we to have a 
defensive alliance with the Latin-American nations, and if so, upon what 
mutual terms and conditions ? Can we, and shall we, make a real start 
toward "the parliament of man, the federation of the world," by a 
Pan-American alliance in the interests of peace? Undoubtedly there 
never was an opportunity so favorable as this; and why should we not 
press home our opportunity by inaugurating that League to Enforce 
Peace, which is the most practical of all the suggestions that have thus 
far been made for the substitution of law for war by international 
agreement ? 

I trust that the Chamber of Commerce of the United States will 
seize the opportunity which is peculiarly within its grasp. Never, it 
seems to me, was anything more timely than the referendum which 
is now being taken by that great national association of the business 
interests of America. I think it is safe to assume that few, indeed, 
in this audience are aware of an event which is almost epochal in its 
importance. 

On the second day of September, 191 5, a Special Committee of the 
Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, composed of 
men of large business experience, representing commercial institutions 
of the highest and most conservative standing, unanimously recom- 
mended that Congress and the President be called upon to do all :"n 
their power to promote the establishment of: 

1. A more comprehensive and better-defined sea law. 

2. An International Court. 

3. A Council of Conciliation. 

4. International Conferences for the better establishment and progressive 
amendment of International Law. 

5. The organization of a System of Commercial and Financial Non-Intercourse, 
to be followed by military force, if necessary, to be applied to those nations entering 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 45 

into the foregoing arrangements and then going to war without first submitting their 
differences to an agreed-upon tribunal.' 

The first four of these recommendations are regarded as based upon 
considerations so convincing that the committee appointed to formulate 
arguments against the recommendations involved, so that all phases of 
the question should be presented on the taking of the referendum, said: 

It is assumed that the first four proposals of the committee are directed to con- 
ditions so well understood that the agreement about the answers to them is so nearly 
universal as to render unnecessary any attempt to formulate objections to them. 

As to the fifth proposal, the committee which is in charge of the referen- 
dum vote states that it involves the adoption of a new principle "which, 
however moderate in its immediate form, may be regarded as a depar- 
ture from accepted rules of conduct in international law"; and it sets 
forth a number of objections, which it says "may be deserving of atten- 
tion." 

All of these objections, however, were met in advance in the unani- 
mous report of the special committee. Having already pointed out that 
"the problem of securing peace and justice among nations is simply an 
extension of what we have successfully solved in the national and 
municipal realms," and that international conferences have already 
secured results of the greatest importance for the peace and progress of 
the world, the committee expresses the opinion that — 

This movement toward international agreement and law was gaining in strength 
each year. Stopped by the war, there is little doubt that it will revive stronger, and 
pursue its course in a more regular and systematic way when the war is over. Business 
men perhaps more than others should be anxious to support such endeavors for a 
better understanding among nations, estabhshing more firmly enlightened standards 
to govern their interrelations and furnishing a more elaborate and organic body of 
international public and administrative law. The present war has again incon- 
trovertibly shown the fundamental need for this. The problem is, then, not new or 
novel, but needs only to be broadened and organized to 3deld all the desired benefits. 
.... There is a difference of opinion as to the employment of force to compel any 
signatory nation to submit its cause to an international tribunal before going to war. 
Your Committee, however, beheves that the great majority of the practical men of 

' The preliminary count of the votes of the constituent members of the national 
chamber on this referendum, announced on January 5, 1916, showed the following 
results: 

Proposition i, 763 in favor; 29 opposed. 

Proposition 2, 753 in favor; 21 opposed. 

Proposition 3, 744 in favor; 28 opposed. 

Proposition 4, 769 in favor; 13 opposed. 

Proposition 5(a) 556 in favor; 157 opposed (economic pressure). 

Proposition 5(6) 452 in favor; 249 opposed (military force). 



46 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

the United States who hold themselves responsible for reasonable progress see the 
necessity of the employment of an adequate pressure or force to compel signatory 
nations to bring their cause before an International Court or Council of Conciliation 
before going to war; because however desirable it may be, theoretically, not to use 
force, yet the history of the last one hundred years, the many wars during that time, 
and the events of the present war have made apparent the fundamental need of an 
international power to enforce the submission of international disputes to a court. 
The alternative is constantly recurring wars, and, in the interval between these wars, 
the increasing absorption in preparation for war of the resources of the principal nations 
of the world. 

The committee demonstrates the wisdom and the practicability of 
the use of economic pressure as a preliminary to the use of force, and 
points out that, while such pressure involves economic loss to the nations 
that apply it, "war, too, is costly and self -injurious to the nations which 
essay it." 

Your Conunittee has studied sympathetically the arguments of those who, on 
principle, oppose all force, even to enforce law instead of war; likewise, the argument 
of those who respect the tradition that the United States should "keep free of entan- 
gling alliances." It must be conceded that the latter described a past policy under 
which our nation has grown in prosperity and happiness. But your Committee is 
forced to see that our country is already directly involved in the present war, because 
the lives and prosperity of American citizens have been involved, and because the 
future peace and prosperity of our country will be involved in the settlement of 
the war. 

Your Committee believes that American citizens, realizing the world's imperative 
need of the substitution of law for war, if militarism is not to dominate, are ready, nay, 
feel it the clear call of duty, to take their share of the work and responsibility neces- 
sary to estabUsh this substitution. We cannot escape if we would, we would not if we 
could; the call of women and children, of the helpless and the weak, suffering inde- 
scribably from needless war, is an irresistible compulsion to all Americans, and, not 
least, to American business men 

Knowing that civilization is made up of the work and suffering and martyrdoms 
of the past, we are willing, yes, anxious, to "pay back," in kind if necessary, what 
we are enjoying, if thereby we can help on this greatest forward step of civilization — 
the substitution of law for war. Your Committee believes that the time is ripe, as 
never before, for the fundamental advance in civilization that the estabhshing of an 

international Court and Council represents Your Committee beheves that it 

is practically possible that the time has arrived, if the United States will but do its 
share of the work. There is little real hope for success if the United States is not a 

part of it If, at the close of the war there exists the legalized purpose of the 

United States to join in the work needed to enforce peace, there will be a most practical 
reason to expect success for this so necessary step forward. In fact, the beginning of 
the necessary organization may be in existence at that time, by reason of the agreement 
between the United States and some of the neutral nations of South America and 
Europe. It is a great opportunity, perhaps the greatest that has ever come to any 
nation. It is a great adventure practically within our power to promote — an enter- 
prise that appeals to all that is best in us — an opportunity we will not miss. 



PREPARATIONS FOR PEACE 47 

Remember, these are not the words and this is not the action of a 
body of visionary enthusiasts; it is the unanimous recommendation 
of a special committee of the greatest commercial body in this country, 
appointed "to examine into the relations between the present war and 
business, and submit suggestions as to the future." Nor is it the only 
indication of the progress of higher ideals in international relations. 

There is a despatch which was sent by Sir Edward Grey to Sir 
Edward Goshen, British Ambassador at Berlin, at the very crisis of the 
diplomatic interchanges which preceded the war, which I have read and 
re-read with mingled feeUngs of sadness and hope. It has always seemed 
to me the most tragic of all the official documents which have been pub- 
lished by the warring nations, and, at the same time, the most encour- 
aging. Just as it seemed inevitable that the explosion would occur, that 
the catastrophe must happen, after the suggestions and counter- 
suggestions, the complaints and counter-complaints had been discussed 
under the forms and usages of diplomacy. Sir Edward Grey struck a 
new note that went straight to the heart of the underlying cause of all 
the difficulty. On July 30, 1914, he authorized Sir Edward Goshen to 
say to the German Chancellor: 

If the peace of Europe can be preserved and the present crisis safely passed, my 
own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement, to which Germany could be a 
party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be 
pursued against her or her allies, by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. 
I have desired this and worked for it, as far as I could, through the last Balkan crisis, 
and Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The 
idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals; but if 
this present crisis, so much more acute than any that Europe has gone through for 
generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction which will 
follow may make possible some more definite rapprochement between the powers than 
has been possible hitherto. 

Sir Edward Grey did not indicate exactly what he had in mind, but 
with the fate of Europe trembling in the balance, Utopia seemed nearer 
and more practically available than had seemed possible before. It was 
to be "some more definite rapprochement between the powers than has 
been possible hitherto" — some arrangement to which Germany could 
be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile 
policy would be pursued against her or her allies "by France, Russia, and 
ourselves, jointly or separately." Oh, the pity that Utopia had not 
seemed nearer a little while before; that this despatch should have 
waited for "this present crisis, so much more acute than any that Europe 
has gone through for generations." What a tragedy that it should have 



48 THE UNIVERSITY RECORD 

been received by a chancellor who heard it without comment "because 
His Excellency was so taken up with the news of the Russian measures 
along the frontier." 

That despatch has not yet been answered. The German Chancellor 
asked for and received a copy as a memorandum, as "he would like to 
reflect on it before giving an answer." He has had much time and much 
occasion to reflect. That despatch will be imanswered at the close of the 
war. The future of mankind depends upon the spirit in which its dis- 
cussion is resumed, and upon the conditions which then exist. After 
this present conflict, so much more destructive and appalling than any that 
Europe has gone through, why should not the United States hold open 
a road that will at least lead toward Utopia by adopting the suggestions 
on which the members of the national Chamber of Commerce are now 
voting — by having in existence the beginning of a League to Enforce 
Peace by agreements then already made between the United States and 
some of the neutral nations of South America and Europe ? Si vis pacem, 
para pacem. If we wish peace let us prepare for peace. 



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